


Camp Frank

by alien_wlw



Category: I Don't Know How But They Found Me (Band), Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Dallon POV, Feels, Fluff and Angst, Fluff ish, I actually kind of like this, I put my soul into it, It took effort ok, M/M, Sad and Happy, Slow Burn, Teenagers, This Is Not Going To Go The Way You Think, it's so tiny, tiny ed mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:07:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22342309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alien_wlw/pseuds/alien_wlw
Summary: Dallon Weekes is being forced to go to summer camp by his dad.Dallon doesn't want to go to summer camp.Dallon hates summer camp with a burning passion.Enter Brendon.
Relationships: Brendon Urie/Dallon Weekes
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	Camp Frank

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't planning on sharing this, but I read it in my fiction class (with names changed of course) and the people there liked it, so. Here it is.

Ok, here’s the thing: natural selection is the worst for kids like me. I’m a middle child. I get shoved around a lot, between walls and fridges and tables. I’m scrawny, and I like to draw in class with the fanciest drawing materials I can find (expensive pens, waterproof notebooks, the real dorky stuff). From the moment I step out of my house to the second I step back into it, my soul is primed for destruction by a higher power. Coming home alive should be more than enough assurance to everyone around me that I’m the opposite of suicidal. I have to fight to walk through the world. I have to battle myself and others to lie around the house. I am practically a superhero in the way I work to defend my weakness.

And yet I must go camping, according to my dad. I must travel with a few dozen other boys to the middle of a half-burnt forest where we shall sit in a circle and be the opposite of weak--we must be strong and completely right and very much ready to talk to our dads about our days with Colgate smiles and bulging muscles. I must go camping, my dad says, because it will teach me that other people are not my enemies--that all of us on this earth are communistic comrades with many a story to share. He says it will stop me from lying in bed all day, and that it will help me embrace the earth. It will not. It will murder me, pure and simple. 

And yet, here we are. Me and a boy named Brendon, sitting side by side as a creaky bus takes us to Camp Frank, along with the rest of this sorry lot of campers. I am wishing I had gotten a window seat. But Brendon sat down first, and his seat was the last, so there’s nothing to do about that now. I try and look out the window, at the red trees and clouds. They grow tiring far too quickly though--the same minute details and shadows, the same colors. I fiddle with my name tag as the bus bumps along. 

“Hey,” Brendon says after nudging me. “You like Phoebe Bridgers?”

I stare at him. He has very long lashes and is skinnier than me. His brown eyes are a little too big for his face. I wonder if he has an eating disorder--I can see his ribcage clearly through his shirt, and his teeth are a pale yellow like my cousin’s. If we were friends I would ask. Close friends. I guess I don’t really have those. 

“No.” My voice sounds a little harsher than I mean. “I don’t know her.” Her name has fluttered around me, sure, but in the ultimate sense of the word, I do not know who she is.

Brendon smiles. “That’s okay! I have some headphones, we should totally listen to her on the ride there.”

I figure it would take more emotion, delicacy, and tact than I could ever dream of to deny, so I nod. He drags some ratty earbuds out of his pocket, and plugs them into his phone. One earbud goes in my ear, one in his. The song, ]apparently called ‘Motion Sickness’, begins with a soft pattern of drums. Then a voice higher than seemingly possible starts in on a breathy rant. 

_I hate you for what you did_  
_And I miss you like a little kid_  
_I faked it every time but that’s alright_  
_I can hardly feel anything,_  
_I hardly feel anything at all_

_You gave me fifteen hundred_  
_To see your hypnotherapist_  
_I only went one time, you let it slide_  
_Fell on hard times a year ago,_  
_was hoping you would let it go and you did_

_I have emotional motion sickness_  
_Somebody roll the windows down_  
_There are no words in the English_  
_language_  
_I could scream to drown you out..._

It’s nice. It’s definitely not what I need right now, which is being back home, but it’s close. I relax into my seat--the most uncomfortable I have ever sat in. 

A full lifetime later, some buff counselor claps his hands together. He’s standing in front of a pitiful campfire. We’re all sitting on some prickly hay bales. Brendon next to me. We are the farthest we could get away from the counselor guy. We’re not friends, me and Brendon. But I think we understand that at this camp there are no friends, only enemies and allies. There is no fun here, no free time--only choices between awful and more awful activities. 

“Hello campers, and welcome to Camp Frank!” Obligatory cheers. The man standing before us is blond, shockingly blond. He smiles like he is paid to, which he probably was. “Before we start in on our first activity of the day, I want to say a little something to all of you. My name’s Jake. And I’ve been working here at Camp Frank for almost five years now. Fun fact--I actually went here as a kid! I had the best time, and when I started working here I was super excited. Now, when I went here, I thought this place was called Camp Frank for one and one reason only: it was named after the late Frank Sinatra.” He sighs, as if utterly embarrassed at his younger self.   
“Spoiler alert--it’s not! Camp Frank actually has two different and cool reasons for its name. One-- Benjamin Franklin! An incredible dude who invented a bunch of fun stuff, and who all of you are going to learn a lot more about. Two--frank is a word for being honest, and truthful. When we say we should be frank with ourselves and one another, we mean we should be ourselves to the fullest extent. We should be honest. We should share our secrets, the things we’re ashamed of, and help each other move past them. We should help each other in our quest for greater knowledge of the world around us. We should be a community that every single one of us can rely on. Because in the end, that’s how you become a real man--by being truthful to yourself, and the people you care about. It’s the only way.” 

He wipes his forehead with his sleeve. He is sweaty enough for me and Brendon to smell. I always hated the closeness that was implied when you could smell another person’s sweat. The way a single scent can fill up your nostrils. “Now, my little Franklins, who’s ready for our first activity? It involves wood!”

I hate him so much. And I figure he must hate himself too.  
  
One hour later, we are deeply engaged in chopping wood. Another counselor has joined us--a woman with a whistle and plastic bottle of water--and she seems to be sold on this religion of wood-chopping and stacking. “Take off your shirts!” She yells as I swing an axe back and forth, and attempt to not chop off a toe. “Take off your shirts the second you’ve sweated through them! Take off your shirts! Show how hard you’ve worked! Take off your shirts! Show me how much closer you are to being men! Real men! Take off your--”

We work in rows. Dirt beneath our feet, a broken down barn to our left, and a block of wood in front of us. In each of our right palms lies an iron axe taller than a baby. Our job is to take apart this piece of wood in front of us, to separate it into bits. Some of the boys are farm boys, and they know how to do this. Some boys are athletic, and play some grimy sport, and they know how to do this. Some boys are smart, and they can eventually understand how to do this. I am none of those boys. I am weak and I can feel nature closing in, trying to destroy me. It’s always trying. I never should have gone camping--I’m so much closer to it now. I don’t have a leg to stand on--some academic feat, some strength in the upper or lower body, some miraculous talent. Nothing to warrant me much experience in life. Nothing to help me destroy this block of wood. 

There is a redheaded boy next to me, and his name tag reads Kevin. He’s friends with a few other boys here--all of them must delight in each other’s shared stutters and tall, lean frames--and he swings his axe back and forth just a little jokingly, just a little too close to me. He’s one of those brash boys that spits when they talk. It would be no one’s fault if his axe struck me right now. He would be forgiven. Loud boys always get forgiven--I know this, I have brothers, I have friends, or used-to-be friends. People. People I heard of, talked about. All so very loud, all so completely forgiven. For their sins. 

I am a quiet boy. If I were to take one more step, the axe would slice right into my midsection, not right through me but deep enough to make a mark, a wound--

“Hey!” A hand is suddenly on my shoulder, the pinky just touching my neck. It’s Brendon’s hand. I recognize his voice--it’s deeper than you’d think, coming from such a skinny frame. Maybe skinny isn’t the right word here. But I don’t think I could stand calling him fragile. “I think we’re about to have a break in a few minutes. Hike with me to the lemonade?”   
  
I slowly set down my axe, and turn to face him. “We have lemonade?” I love lemonade. With an almost cult-like passion. It runs in the family. 

“Well, yeah. It’s up on this ugly little hill though. Really don’t know why they put it there, maybe to teach us something about ‘perseverance’. I say if they wanted to teach us something about perseverance they should make us work without lemonade, or cover it up with brambles or something. Oh god, I hope they didn’t hear me, I don’t want to give them ideas…”

Brendon is interrupted by the redheaded boy. Kevin. The one with the axe. He talks to Brendon in a kind of drawl with a mini laugh at the end. “Hey, how far did you get with these blunt-ass axes? I’ve barely gotten anywhere.” Chunks of his block lie in the grass at his feet, scattered like disembodied limbs. His white camp-issued t-shirt is soaked through, turning it an awful mix of grey and pink.

“I’ve done okay,” Brendon says, smiling with one end of his mouth higher up than the other. “Not as well as you, though. Hey, have you done this before? This camp stuff? Cause you’re killing it, I gotta say.” I try to swallow the sudden dryness in my throat.

“Aw thanks dude. It’s not that hard though. My brothers taught me. You just gotta tilt your wrist, like--” he swings. Another chunk falls with the grace of a decapitated head. This one roughly the size of a baseball. 

Brendon laughs a little, and shakes his head. “I dunno man. There might be a bit more to it than that.” 

I try to laugh too, but I think it comes off as more of a high-pitched cough. I’m not good at this conversation part. I’d like to be, but I’m just not. Brendon is. And the fear that he’s now going to abandon me--that he’s slipping through my fingers bit by bit--is now so intense I don’t know what to do. It happens like this--it comes in waves. I can be standing still, and then suddenly a big wave behind me, so sudden it’s hard to believe I’m not imagining it. I would like to be imagining it. 

Before I realize it my breathing is speeding up. I can feel my blood reinventing itself, moving around so my heart can beat faster, my lungs inhale more air, contracting, constricting and swelling. I can feel my nerves recalculating, bracing for the saber-toothed tiger that must be coming. Even though there isn’t one, and even though I’m not going to die anytime soon, my body doesn’t know how to stop. It twists itself up into impossible shapes until I feel like I can’t breathe. Until it’s convinced itself I shouldn’t be able to breathe. That right now, I just need to run. 

“Hey...you okay?” Wow, Brendon’s closer to me now. His features are all scrunched up, and it looks good on him. It feels good to hear a concerned tone too. I wonder how clearly the panic was showing on my face.

I respond as best as I can. “Oh, yeah. I’m fine.” 

“You sure? You looked a little off there and--”

“I’m good. What were we talking about?”

He doesn’t like being interrupted. But he does like to talk. So he does. He repeats the lemonade offer, and says Kevin is also feeling thirsty so who are we to deny him lemonade. I can’t disagree on this with something more substantial than emotions and inherent clinginess. Brendon is a nice boy who shares his smile, has hair on his arms, and likes listening to indie music during bus rides. If I was better at talking to people and showing them that I enjoy their company, I would do everything in my power to make him my friend. Because he didn’t seem freaked out by my freakout. Because I like him, simply and without anything too messy or tacky added on. But I never really knew how to navigate my way through a crowded room, how to make small talk to kill time, and how to make friends that stick by you. Still, I have the audacity to get jealous when the people I like go away. Whether I’ve given them good reason to or not.

I tell Brendon I don’t really like lemonade, and I’ll see him at the bunkhouse later. He’s a nice kid, and I hope Kevin doesn’t make fun of him.

Soon enough, we get our break. Fifteen minutes. More than the younger kids, at least. We’re allowed to look in the duffel bags that we brought for ourselves, and we’re allowed to call mom or dad, but not allowed to go anywhere the counselors can’t see us. There’s a small cluster of picnic benches near an abandoned barn, and most of the boys go and sit there. They trade conversation and damp sandwiches. Games on their phone, and gossip. Stories. I grab my phone, a charger, and head right for the woods. No one notices me slip away. It’s kind of depressing how forgettable I am, but I don’t want to think about that right now. I want to listen to music in the middle of the afternoon, in the cruel temporary shade. I don’t trust this forest. Frankly, I’m scared of it. But I need some ‘alone time’, for lack of a better phrase. The one thing I’m absolutely brilliant at is finding alone time. I’ve hid in bathroom stalls, on the tops of roofs and in quiet library corners for hours. Often at the expense of everything else in my life. Grades, tests. Friends.

The tree branches make a simple roof for me with decaying leaves and twigs. I open my music, and eventually settle on some good old-fashioned Lorde. She’s probably got a song for this. No headphones, but I’m sure whatever insects are listening won’t mind. I pick a tree to lean against and set her on shuffle. 

_Well summer slipped us, underneath her tongue_  
_Our days and nights are perfumed with obsession…_

Hell yeah. The Louvre. Absolute bop. I’m just settling into this knotty old tree when I hear a loud crash to my right. I turn to see no one else but Brendon, surrounded by a pile of dead branches. His dramatic entrance must’ve knocked some down. He’s scratching his neck, and there’s a leaf in his hair. “Hey, um so I saw you sneaking away, and not to be a goody two shoes but--”

_Half of my wardrobe is on your bedroom floor--_

“Brendon!” I forgot to turn Lorde off but it doesn’t matter now because oh my god. Oh my. God. Brendon’s got. Near his foot there’s a. It’s moving. Slithering. Hissing. You know the sound. Everyone. Knows it. 

_Use our eyes, throw our hands, overboard._  
_I am your sweetheart, psychopathic crush..._

Brendon furrows his brow. Confused. “What, why are you yelling?” 

“Look at, look at your feet!” I think I’m flailing my arms, but. It’s moving. Western movie, maybe we’re just in a Western. Maybe. 

_Drink up your movements, still I can't get enough._

I don’t. Think. Just run over. Push him. My hands are weak. Like. Mist. But he moves. He falls--falls. Back, and the little viper sinks teeth. Sinks teeth down. Little bits of. My leg. Teeth mark.

_I overthink your puh-puh-punctuation use,_  
_Not my fault, just a thing--_

A spectacular feeling of red hot heat flashes through me and. God it’s like nothing else. It’s absolutely nothing. Like nothing else. It’s so terrible. But it also. So. Numb. Water. I need water. Do I? I look up. See other faces. Voices. Moving towards me like wanderers. Stuck in the desert. Time. Sand. Hourglass. Lorde doesn’t know how to shut up. I love her. Psychopath. Brendon. Hope he’s okay.

_A rush at the beginning,_  
_I get caught up, just for a minute…_

It’s gradual. The fade to black. Thought it would be quick. It’s not. First grey. Then. Then. So soft black. Like felt. No. Rougher. I sink in and it feels like I’m drowning in oil. It’s soft and sticky like that. Old, hurting. Feeble. I’m an invalid. Bittersweet. 

\------

The camp medical report will say I wandered off absentmindedly during a break between activities, and had not been properly warned about the wildlife in the area. It will say that a spirited young lad, named Brendon Urie, noticed me wandering off and followed. It will say that upon finding me, Brendon was nearly the victim of the Cow-Killing Viper, a snake named for it’s supposed ability to kill a cow, through that is admittedly an urban legend. Nonetheless, it is a very dangerous snake, and had I not pushed Brendon out of the way, it would have certainly bit him. Unfortunately for me, the snake was angered by sudden movement, and bit my leg. It will say I then fainted, and was able to be put in stable condition while I was unconscious by a team of camp medics. It will say my parents were contacted. It will not say they came to visit me, because they did not. It will say I woke up from my unconscious state after two days, and was prescribed at least one more day of bedrest, which I used to fall intermittently in and out of sleep.

It will not say the first words I heard upon waking up, a few grim announcements about the camp schedule, that I had already missed so much. A long, uphill ‘bonding hike’ was to take place. Rock climbing, with harnesses and chalk on hands. We were going to take apart a car and put it back together again, and get oil on our fingers and foreheads. We were going to become real men. Learn about Benjamin Franklin. The key and the kite, all that jazz. Read bible verses. Wrestle every friday. I had my time packed into little squares, spread ahead of me. Like a quilt made entirely of little grey boxes.

It will not say that Brendon visited me on that day I was prescribed bed rest. The one day he thought he’d be able to speak to me. My mouth was numb and swollen. My eyelids half-closed, bits of gunk stuck in their corners. Tubes were stuck in my wrist like afterthoughts. There had been some stuff injected in me--I don’t know what, but it was strong. Painkillers, the like. I don’t think those camp medics knew how to do much else. 

“Dallon?” If I’d been able to move, I would’ve started at the sound of his voice.   
  
“Dallon, I don’t really know if you can hear me or not, so I’m just going to talk to you.” He’s trying to reach me but I’m stuck in this haze. It’s grey there. Like that quilt. Ahead of me. Behind me. 

A few background sounds find their way into my ears--the grinding of teeth, beeping of machines. It strikes me just how alone we are right now. “Is that okay? I think it’s part of speech therapy. Something like that.” 

“Okay, um. No need for you to answer that.” It’s kind of him to fill in the silence. He’s always been like this, hasn’t he? Filling in the empty spaces. I suppose it was only natural that I gravitated towards him, what with being full of empty spaces. 

“Here goes.” Pause. Breath. I think I hear a bird chirp, though who knows. 

“First of all, thanks for saving me. I have a really weak immune system--it’s a combination of things. I was a premature baby, so I’ve been in and out of hospitals a lot. At one point I had to re-do my seventh grade year, I had missed so much school. Not to mention some other unhealthy habits I picked up--everyone picks up a few of those. Point is, I’m not sure I could’ve just taken that bite like you did. I mean obviously you didn’t just take it, you’re in a hospital bed, but um. I’m not sure I would be able to, uh, get back to stable condition. Like you did. I’m sure you understand what I mean.”

He coughs. There’s a drumbeat in my head and it hurts. The urge to fall back into painless sleep is strong. No. No, I’ve got to stay awake for this. I have that stupid feeling in my stomach, the same old fluttery butterflies-and-snakes one that I so rarely get anymore. This is important. This must be important. Brendon does an awkward little laugh. “I’m rambling, aren’t I?”

No you’re not. Keep talking. Please. “God, I always ramble. I need to calm down. Not that you’d mind. No idea why you saved me, by the way. You reacted so quickly. Like you knew it was coming. I really shouldn’t have followed you into the woods. That was my bad. I’m--I’m sorry. You just wanted to be left alone. I get that--when you’re in a hospital full of doctors, wearing nothing but a thin blue gown, privacy is something precious. I should’ve respected yours. I guess I just wanted to talk more with you, you know? Get to know you better.”

A bit of light flickers in this room. We’re getting deep into morning. I wonder if Brendon is skipping the activity to talk to me. He’s so sweet, he’d do it, wouldn’t he? “You know, um.”

He stumbles for words as I fight the knots in my tongue. We both want to speak, and speak well, so desperately. We share the same ugly hunger for words. “I’ve seen a lot of gorgeous things in my home city. But I don’t think anything will ever compare to my morning, uh, travel? Commute? I think that’s what it’s called. My morning commute. 

“I was so glad when I finally had one. All my friends had a standard commute, and me getting one made me feel just a tad more normal. After all the surgeries and stuff.

“It starts in this dark hovel of a subway stop—the bottom of my shoes are always dirty after stepping in this place. Then, I board the train, squished between bags and other people. All that smelly air and those horribly bright lights. I have to resist the urge to plug my nose, cause I know that’d be rude. This is the worst part. Sometimes the train already smells like something bad, rotten eggs or dirty socks, and then it’s even worse. But once the train starts moving, I see more and more light. The more sharp, halting stops, the less people, the less smell. Slowly, the train clears and becomes only smooth gray and green with only a few people left in their seats. This, to any other person, would usually mean I’ve missed my stop.” He laughs a little at myself. I feel like I’m smiling, maybe even through the grey.

“But to me it means I’m free to crank up the music in my headphones, and press my face up against the windows. Doesn’t matter who’s playing--Killers, King Princess, Phoebe, whatever. It’s all so much better loud. The windows are cloudy, but they still can’t hide the view of house after house, stacked up with bushes and cars and people and roads. Sometimes it’ll look like one huge house to me—all of the rose bushes, monstrous weeds, crying babies, fretful mothers, grandparents, grand balconies and crumbling brick walls collapsing into each other. It’s all such a glorious mess, and it makes me breathless every time.

“I could have grown up in any of these little houses, so far below me. I could be walking on this stick-like road, I could be a pilot in a tiny little plane, stuck in that silver capsule and I would still be only a dash of color from this train window. Only a fleeting image given a soundtrack by whatever forsaken soul decided to haunt my headphones that day.

“And yet—it’s still all so amazing to me. So I’m just a smack of something. So what. I’m still me. I still exist. And all these people, they’re still themselves. We’re all here, no matter what. We’re here. We all get mad. We all fight. We all get too attached to the wrong people and we all watch bad TV in the dead of night. We all gaze longingly at greasy food and we all feel awful after eating it. We all find new friends, even when we think there’s nothing left to live for. We all spend too much money on something stupid just to feel a bit better. And we all find a way to be so much bigger than the city, the train, than anything else I could possibly see from that crappy train window.”

Cough. “I’m rambling again. Sorry.” He doesn’t need to calm down. Not now. Never.

“I hope you wake up soon, Dallon.” I’m glad I met him. So, so glad I met him. 

The grey haze, it clears, just a little. I see the cracked ceiling above me. The scattered beams of light making their way through the windows. Brendon. He’s sitting to my left, this fantastic boy. Just. Fantastic. Worried expression on his face. I turn my head and his eyes widen.

“Brendon,” I rasp. My voice is weak, but I can speak and that’s what matters. What a brilliant boy. What a brilliant boy. “You wanna ditch this fucking hellhole?”

He smiles. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading that lol. Comments and kudos make my brain do the happy lil dopamine dance.


End file.
